Managing Organisational Change - Essay Example

The Engineering Change on the shop floor  With most people, change is not an easy thing to deal with. When changes take place in the organizations where such people work, their attitude towards the changes become even worse. Worst of it all is when in the organizational change takes place under the control, suggestion or watch of a junior officer. Such people who are concerned about taking glory would simply oppose the subordinate who wants to bring about the change. The issue discussed in the case study seems to have a similar setting.

It is for the sake of such possible ill-feelings about change in the organization that there are change management models and dynamics of change theories to serve as guides in the cases of change in the organization.The major cause of the problem in the case study is approach. The approach with which the industrial engineer went about his change is to blame for the problems that were encountered. This argument is made against two of eight dynamics of change lessons suggested by Fullan (1993) and quoted in North Central Regional Educational Laboratory.

According to Fullan (1993), “You cant mandate what matters. The more complex the change, the less you can force it.” In fact, the change desired by the engineer was a very major change that should have gone through a series of step-by-step processes in implementing. The engineer seemed to be in a hurry to make the change and perhaps his glory shine. He was therefore eager to force the change (forgoing how his team leader felt about it). The second point raised by Fullan (1993), which is closely related to the first is that “individualism and collectivism must have equal power.

There are no one-sided solutions to isolation and group think.” For this reason, the engineer should have worked more on convincing all stakeholders in the department to fully understand him before implementing the change and in implementing the change he should have factored in the views and ideas of each and every stakeholder to the latter.Looking at the kind of change that the industrial engineer wanted to undertake, it is the kind that can be described as individual change. For this reason, ADKAR model for individual change developed by Prosci is recommended for future changes of that nature.

“Proscis model of individual change is called ADKAR - an acronym for Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement” (Prosci, 2010). From the ADKAR model, the industrial engineer should have sensitized an Awareness of the need for change among all stakeholders in the team, sort the Desire of all stakeholders to participate and support the change, built maximum Knowledge on how to change, gained greater Ability to implement required skills and behaviors of all people in his department and finally Reinforced the sustainability of the change (Prosci, 2010).

It will therefore be concluded that it was not a bad idea that the industrial engineer wanted a change because change models support individual change. For instance Fullan (1993) notes that “every Person is a change agent.” However, the industrial engineer should have been more mindful of his approach.REFERENCE LISTProsci, 2010. ‘Proscis change management methodology’, accessed September 18, 2011 North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1993 ‘Dynamics of the Change Process’, accessed September 18, 2011